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The humble Boss BD-2 Blues Driver - a very underrated workhorse pedal. But in they stock configuration, they shelve off a load of low end and have a tendency to be quite noisy. Over the years, various people have 'modded' the BD-2 to fix these issues - the main one being Robert Keeley.

Keeley modded Blues Drivers are used by many great players all over the world (if you've ever watched That Pedal Show, you'll know how much they love theirs!) Because of the way it cleans up with the guitar's volume control, many players (Andy Timmons, most notably) use it to shape their clean tone.

Keeley upgrade components in the stock BD-2 to increase dynamics, lower the noise floor, bring back the low end & change the clipping structure slightly. They also do an additional 'Phat' mod (as in the pedal here) with an extra switch to add even more low end.

However, in 2014 Boss themselves announced the Waza Craft range - and they listened to the various criticisms of the stock BD-2. The BD-2w is essentially a Keeley modded Blues Driver, and the 'Custom' mode is the Phat mod.

Plenty of people on forums & on YouTube have discussed how the stock BD-2 compares to both the Keeley mod & the Waza. But as far as I'm aware, no videos exist comparing the two modded pedals directly. Many have speculated on forums...but here is the proof, once and for all!

To my ears, the Waza has less low end in Standard mode than the Keeley. The Keeley cleans up slightly better with the volume control, but because of the huge low end it can sound slightly mushy at high gain, even with the Phat switch down. In Custom/Phat modes, the Keeley has more low end once again.

With everything set to 12, the Waza has a slightly higher output than the Keeley and is slightly brighter, so in the video I compensate for this by turning the volume & tone up on the Keeley - so that we can better compare the fundamental sounds of the pedals without perceived volume/EQ differences.

I didn't show this in the video, but the noise floors of the two are essentially identical - and the EQ sweeps are almost exactly the same too.

Which do you prefer? And why? Comment below!

Guitar is a Fender Strat through a Cornell Romany Plus (recorded with an sE Electronics RNR1 Ribbon) and a Hughes & Kettner Puretone (recorded with a 57)

www.facebook.com/joeperkinsmusic
jp@joeperkins.co.uk

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